Data Privacy bill was approved by Senate . Business World Online reports “Prison terms and fines of up to six years and P5 million, respectively, will be imposed on those who access and disclose the data without authorization. Use for journalistic, artistic, research and law enforcement purposes will be allowed.

The bill also creates the National Privacy Commission as the “implementing arm to enforce the regulations, receive complaints and institute investigations” concerning data privacy.

The agency, to be attached to the Office of the President and run by a commissioner with two deputies, will get an initial budget of P20 million.”

If implemented properly, it will protect the personal information of individuals from being used by personal data controllers and by government if unauthorized. Most of all spam text messages and calls will be discouraged. Credit card companies are mostly the ones I encounter who sell our data information for marketing purposes, without our permission. I also notice the visits in my home from the City government personnel selling fire extinguishers (address given when applying for business permit and fire permit was given). Some hard sell companies (real estate, network marketing) pretend to have raffle gimmick to solicit information and also “surprise” you when you win only to be fooled to attend a selling session.

The National Privacy Commission seems to have no powers of enforcement. Will they have an enforcement arm? My main concern is really enforcement. Reporting offenders? This needs to be discussed more since the good points of this bill will just go down the drain if not implemented well.

Noemi, Editor of Blog Watch and features editor of Philippine Online Chronicles is a 54 year old mother to three kids and is married to Atty. Luis H. Dado.
She loves being a full time mother and homemaker after retiring as a Researcher/Consultant from the UP Institute for Small Scale Industries in 1987. Now that her children are all college graduates, she devotes her time to grief support, blogging, new media events and using her blogs to promote online advocacies.
Her personal blog is at aboutmyrecovery.com, which garnered numerous awards such as Best Website, Blog Category during the 9th and 10th Philippine Web Awards. Her blog also won in the Blog- Personal Category of the DigitalFilipino.com Web Awards 2007 and Globelines Broadband Family Blog Award (in honor of family-oriented blogging) 2007 Philippine Blog Award. Globe also recognized her as Digital Elder in the 2009 Philippine Blog Award.

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